Lifestyle

Health bureaucracy and smoking

Not quite in the Myles Peterson league but the Department of Health and Ageing has come up with another great bit of bureaucracy.

Central Office staff are reminded that they are not permitted to smoke within 15 metres of departmental premises at any time. This includes the Mocca café on the ground floor of Scarborough House. Please note the café’s identified smoking area does not apply to staff of the department as it is within the 15 metre zone.

I’m not, nor have ever been, a smoker, but it seems odd that a a non-Health employee can smoke in the designated area, but a Health employeee cannot. As a manager, i guess I’m glad none of my staff are smokers as I see a minefield in trying to enforce this directive.

generally stops the smokers congregating around the building exits and forming a small smoke cloud and forcing visitors to run the gauntlet

Since the new parking arrangements at TCH, the designated staff smoking area is now outside the carpark under building 12. The carpark is now used for mobility/disabled parking… which means that people with mobility problems who generally can’t use stairs to access the hospital get the pleasure of sharing the lift with smokers coming back inside from their break (who probably could use the stairs but usually don’t).

The Department of Innovation has the same policy – it was the first department to implement it. It’s hardly earth shattering, and generally stops the smokers congregating around the building exits and forming a small smoke cloud and forcing visitors to run the gauntlet.